Day 609, March 3, 2022

Late Fire

A late fire in the wood stove flickers weakly to life. The paper bag laced with cardboard, has burned away, and what is left is smoldering embers on the sharp edges of split logs, the short stunted sections of logs I’ve sawed off of pieces too long or too fat to fit in this modest fire box.

It is a late season chore, all the leftovers and rejects that have cycled to the bottom of the wood pile, the last of two seasons of two cords. These I cut down awkwardly using whatever jumble of logs I can arrange to support the cut with an electric chainsaw. There is something about an electric chainsaw that offends me, that makes me feel like less of a man, less of a rural resident, but it is convenient, and my last gas chainsaw failed and died, and this one keeps my ambitions a little more modest, and since I am older and slower now, perhaps that’s a good thing.

The shorter pieces of off cuts, I balance on the diminished section of stump and use the splitter to make a box of kindling. “Be brave,” Robert Smith used to admonish the less graceful logs he split with an axe before making a fire. My aim is passable, but less than accurate. Perhaps if I were more intentional, stood with my legs spread appropriately, moved the stump out away from the wood rack and vine branches. But it doesn’t seem necessary. I work with what I have and the kindling burns whether it is uniformly sized, or not. 

The flickering light has not died, which means the wood is actually burning. It is not the roaring torrent of flame it could be with the bottom vent cocked open, but it is lingering, holding on like it might become something worthy of this chilly evening, where sitting in the IKEA chair, the tip of my nose feels cold.

The winter I stayed home, I made a fire every single day, and fed it logs when I would get up from my workstation at the kitchen table. The fire kept me warm, even over by the big plate glass window. It made me think of the taste of closed eyelids, a warm mug of tea, the memory of a cab ride on a cold day. I wonder if my post-pandemic self will remember that. I can barely remember that, now. Did I really make a fire every morning? 

The light is fainter now. Maybe it is not catching. The open vent is almost too much air, like the blowing out of a candle. It might just be extinguished. 

Oh, look art that! Something has burst into flame and it is so bright in there I can see the shapes of the firebricks. Sometimes a fire just needs time. It is like a sad song that has found a cheery little rhyme. Maybe the room will be warmer when it is close to bedtime. I’ll have to decide if the flame is robust enough to close the vent without suffocating it all. A slightly stifled fire burns warmer, and longer, less of itself is lost up the chimney in a brash hurry. The hinged vent is maneuvered with a lever and a spring. It closes with a satisfying creaky slap, like the sound of a mason jar lid being fit to a mason jar. Not the same timbre, but the same satisfying feel.

Sometimes, I wait too long, and the kindling and section of log will have burned down to embers and adding a log is really like starting all over again, except I don’t have the patience, or it is too late, so the fire dies under the carcass of a new log, and in the morning, if I turn the piece over, it will be blackened with maybe just a few embers still glowing.

But I haven’t waited too long. The coals are throwing off a good heat when I open the door. The vent snaps shut with a little puff of ash. I reshape the kindling with the poker and add another wedge. The flames die down as the fire regroups, works to rebuild momentum. I could stand before the open door of a wood stove for along time, like sitting all morning in an aluminum canoe fishing for trout, the sun heating up the metal so that it nearly burns your cheek when you press your face against it. The smell of the warm seat cushion flotation devices. The smell of a can of sweet corn. The smell of a man’s cologne that was sickeningly overpowering when he was standing close, but now that he is gone, seems faintly alluring like the musk of a passing animal.